Women face uphill battle for property rights

Life took a dramatic turn for 32-year-old Bahtigul when her husband divorced her, leaving her with two small children to raise alone. She now lives in a small two-room house and works at a local food bazaar in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, to maintain her family. “It's been three years since I got divorced and my husband banished me from his home. But shouldn't I have any rights to some of his property and the land that he cultivates?" she asked, with tears in her eyes. While gender discrimination has decreased in Kyrgyzstan when compared to other Central Asian states, the rights of women, who make up 52 percent of the population, are still violated given longstanding traditional stereotypes, activists say. Levels of discrimination are particularly high in rural areas where 66 percent of the country’s 5.1 million inhabitants live. "It is very interesting that women participate in many seminars and projects, but when it comes to political power, financial resources and the distribution of land, women are not to be seen,” Zamira Akbagysheva, President of the Congress of Women of Kyrgyzstan, a prominent women's group, said recently. In an effort to address just that, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), in collaboration with government bodies, civil societies and women NGOs, launched a unique project entitled: “Women’s rights to land in Kyrgyzstan”, to enhance women’s rights to economic resources including land, credit, inheritance and property. “The primary aim of our project is to strengthen the potential of local NGOs and communities to work independently...it is a long-term project. Even if the project stops, local NGOs and women’s organisations will continue to work by themselves,” Asyl Jakieva, UNIFEM programme specialist, told IRIN in Bishkek. The project was initiated by the local NGO Women Entrepreneurs Support Association (WESA) in 2002 following problems with land reform efforts introduced by the government after an October 1998 referendum and the failure to include women's rights in rural areas. In the beginning, the project offered only legal consultations, but following support by the Norwegian government, began offering advice on economic development - women profiting from land, gender expertise, gender budgeting, the participation of women in local budget planning, monitoring of women’s rights for land, as well as an information component involving TV, radio and print media. "Problems appear when there are divorces or other domestic disputes as most property deeds are in the man's name as local people consider the male to be the dominant figure of the family. As a result, women don't have anything in their names," Kaiyrgul Sadybakasova, head of WESA's legal sub-project, explained. "Additionally, rural people - even rural administration officials - fail to understand the procedures of agricultural land reform reform which poses a huge problem as everyone interprets it differently," she said. However, according to Bakyt Kudaibergenov, the UNIFEM project’s agricultural land reform consultant, relations with local administrative officials are getting better, while four or five years earlier there was much resistance to their work. "Today, people and local administrations wait for my visits as they understand that I can provide them with real help," Kudaibergenov maintained. "People of different occupations like leaders of local NGOs and communities, or even students, apply for help about a large variety of issues such as land rent, land property, and the use of pastures," he added. With offices throughout the country, the project provides free legal consultations. Additionally, as part of an outreach effort, legal consultants from the project offices organise trips to remote villages and areas to help people on a monthly basis. And while the project is aimed largely at helping women, men too are welcome. But although the initiative has achieved some success in making several amendments to the country's land code, the majority of problems remain, particularly with regard to contradictions between the country's land code and civil law. As a result, land and property disputes can languish in the court system for up to four years. "For example, in the majority of villages, the aksakal courts [local court of elders and prominent individuals] do not work and even if they work, they tend to rule against women given longstanding traditional stereotypes, while in the majority of official courts there seems to be a bias against women which is why women sometimes ask us just to attend the hearing for moral support," Sadybakasova added.